Once again, this makes use of the same approach I took with the dice. I set up using a black silk dressing gown as background this time, as I felt the sheen might work well. My little desk light off to the right, set at different angles (or turned off) depending on the shot and then the camera on a tripod and messing about with aperture a little (as the shot data should show).

I’m fascinated by light when working like this. The shadows and the changes in colour just using things as simple as a sheer piece of cloth opposed to cotton or moving the lights about even a little. If I had the money I’d go out tomorrow and buy the tables you can get for this sort of photography, but the more I consider it the more I actually think they might leave things quite predictable and formulaic. As things stand I find myself wandering the house looking for spare lights, things to set them on and things to use for backgrounds etc.

All these shots were taken in Aperture Priority mode and the shutter times vary incredibly as a result. Interestingly (and something I didn’t realise when I started) this seems to have had a fun effect on the actual egg itself, with some of the shots looking quite sinister whilst others look like little Oscars for Martians. aprt from cropping there hasn’t been anything else done….yet…

I haven’t decided which is my favourite, but I figured this one is in the running.

I’ve a growing list of things I want to try and photograph. Oddities we’ve picked up traveling or ornaments etc. I may well make it a periodic thing on to try. In this case, we picked up the egg in Austria a few years back in a little rock shop (I kid you not!).

Warning. Geological information follows…

The egg is actually a piece of Iron Pyrite or Fool’s Gold that has been ground down to the shape of an egg. I’m told the closer to a perfect egg the artist gets the more valuable they become, but I actually quite like the crevasses on this – they do fantastic things with the light.

The crystals inside the egg actually come up really well in the uncompressed versions of the pictures and make some interesting and unusual pictures in themselves.